Paterson, Katherine. Jella Lepman and Her Library of Dreams: The Woman Who Rescued a Generation of Children and Founded the World’s Largest Children’s Library. Illustrated by Sally Deng. Chronicle Books, 2025.

I’ve never heard of Jella Lepman, and even though I’ve been in the children’s library world for a long time, I am only cursorily familiar with IBBY, the International Board on Books for Young People, and the International Youth Library in Munich, the world’s largest library for children’s literature. Nevertheless, since I love children’s books and own a library full of them, of course I was drawn to this true story of a German Jewish woman who fled Germany before World War II and came back to bring “nourishment for the soul” to the German children after the war.

“It was obvious that the children of Germany whom Jella had come home to help were in desperate of food, of clothing, of safe shelter. Elly Heuss-Knapp, whose husband later became president of West Germany, told Jella that while soup kitchens and care packages were all good and necessary, ‘nourishment for the soul’ was even more important.”

So, Jella Lepman, who was under contract to work with the U.S. army of occupation in Germany with the title of Advisor for WOmen’s and Youth Affairs, became the originator and spokesperson for gathering, translating, publishing, and providing books for the impoverished German children who, after all, weren’t responsible for the war and for Naziism. She began with an International Exhibition of Children’s Books, an affair for which she had to obtain all of the books free of charge from libraries and donors and publishers all over the world. There was no funding for such an exhibition.

Then, Jella had to find a suitable place to hold the exhibition and get volunteers to help clean and ready the building for a book show. The books came form all over the world–from countries that had been enemies of Germany until recently, and the exhibition opened on July 5, 1946. German publishers, authors, parents, and children were welcomed into the exhibition, and Jella soon began her next project of finding a permanent place to house a library for the many books she had collected.

The remainder of the book tells about the library that Jella Lepman began with the help of such luminaries as German children’s author Erich Kastner, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as many volunteers and donors from all over the world, but especially the United States. The library was and is located in a castle, and it made me a bit jealous. All of that room! They even had an art studio where children could paint and draw, inspired by stories read aloud.

Katherine Paterson is a distinguished author in her own right, winner of two Newbery Medals, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the Hans Christian Andersen Award. The Andersen Award is administered by IBBY, the international organization that Jella Lepman helped start. This biography of Jella Lepman at first glance looks like a picture book. It’s picture book size, and illustrated with lovely charcoal(?), chalk (?), and watercolor drawings interspersed with photos of Lepman and her colleagues and the places where she lived and worked. So, sort of a picture book, but the text is written for middle grades and older. And the entire book is 105 pages long. So, it’s not a picture book for preschool and primary audiences.

I enjoyed reading about Ms. Lepman and her work with the library and IBBy in post-war Germany. The biography would give children and adults quite a bit of insight into the time period as well as reminding us all of the importance of books as food for the soul. It reminded me of me of the work that the 21st Century Packhorse Librarians are doing in South Carolina and neighboring states and of the work that private living books lending libraries and librarians continue to do daily.